Tag Archives: Franco Montoya

Two bodies were found in a Ridgewood apartment building Monday night, police said.

Cops made the grisly discovery around 9:30 p.m. after responding to a 9-1-1 call about a possible assault.

The victims, Franco Montoya, 21, and Beatrice Morris, 28, were pronounced dead on the scene and sustained blunt force trauma to the head, according to authorities. The female victim, assumed to be Morris, additionally suffered compression to the neck.

The two, who were believed to be a couple, were known on their Flushing Avenue block as “friendly and normal,” neighbors said.

They were not people who were looking for trouble, said Ania, who owns a catering business next door and did not want to give her last name. Ania, 47, was told the pair was beaten to death.

“It’s shocking,” she said. “Somebody who lives next door, somebody you see almost every day. It’s awful.”

Carmen Rodriguez, 68, lives on a residential block around the corner from the scene. The neighbor said she was “shocked” that an incident could have happened right next door after police came to her house to search her backyard.

“You don’t see much crime here, just people coming back and forth from work,” she said, adding that nothing like this has ever happened before in her 30 years living in the area. She described the neighborhood as “very safe.”